Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

YOUNG me a smile and a nod, but: that was before the river of money started to. flow Bob’s way. I’ve heard since on good authority that Jimmie’s going to work caused a consid- erable fuss between Bob and Elizabeth, for the job Jimmie selected was as a clerk in the grocery store of old ’Lije Brown. I have heard that Elizabeth didn’t want Jim- mie to go to work at all.. When Bob didn’t budge none, she was for having him get a job in a bank or something genteel like that. For once Bob set his foot down, and _ Elizabeth couldn’t lift the foot, try as she would. Bob was reported to have said that. Jimmie wasn’t none too good to be a clerk, inasmuch as his father had been a horse- shoer in his time. A word about old ’Lije Brown. [ think ’Lije was a natural born storekeeper. He -had the biggest grocery in town and done about seven fimes the business any other srocer did. For one thing, he charged higher: prices, and mebbe that was a reason why folks went to him to trade. "Lije was a real moneymaker, and of course old Bob didn’t despise no moneymakers. That was all Bob knowed his own selt. Well, when Bob died Elizabeth wanted to drag Jimmie out of ’Lije’s store. I don’t suppose no mother ever had a more devoted son than Jimmie was to Elizabeth, but Jim- mie seemed to have that deep down stub- born streak that Bob had. He would give in to his mother on almost any subject, but down goes his foot on the proposition of leaving the store. He said he was learning to be a business man, and he wasn’t going to stop midway in his career. I got my own idea about that. Jimmie may have been learning to be a business man all right, but his car was stuck in the mud. I can tell when a man has got into a rut. Jimmie went to and from that store and worked in it just like he was a machine. He was a pleasant, fine looking lad, and he was spry, so he waited on more trade than ’Lije’s two other clerks put together; but at the same time Jimmie didn’t know how good he was. an asset he was to ol’ "Lije, and you bet your canvas shoes ’Lije didn’t tell him. The ~N He didn’t know what - REBELS. 665 Fraser name and Jimmuie’s good looks and pleasantness was getting him by as a clerk, but he didn’t have no initiative. planning to cash in on his reputation. And of course that showed he wasn’t no busi- ness man. I have a sneaking notion -that . Jimmie stayed along in the store half be- cause he was already there when his father’ died, and half because he thought that was. what his father would have wanted him to do. ; ‘He didn’t have to work in no store nor nowhere else. His father had left him ten thousand dollars all in his own right, and the rest of the fortune to Elizabeth. There was around a million all told in that for- tune, and Elizabeth ‘would have shelled it all out to Jimmie if he had asked for it. Yes, she would have shelled it all out to Jimmie—that is, before Jimmie married Sadie Harrison. Gosh, that marriage would make a story all by itself, but there ain’t no room to elaborate on it. This. Sadie biows into town arid‘ goes to work at the Mercantile store after- Royal Selden had married Alice Moore and Alice had nat- | urally quit her job. The winds of heaven must have been blowing soft and fair and free: when this Sadie Harrison was born. Gosh, but she was a dazzler! I’ve met all kinds of folks In my sixty odd years, but I had never met anybody like her before. It wasn’t that she was just pretty, and she was all of that. It wasn’t that she had dark, curly hair, bobbed a la mode, as they say of ice cream on pie, and big’ eyes so blue they made you think of the sky in June, and red, red lips, and a burnin’ flamin’ color in her cheeks. It wasn’t that she had the sauciest manner and the swing- ingest walk and the most graceful figure, and could wear an old gray sweater and a red Tam o’ Shanter like they was the silks and satins of a queen. No, it wasn’t none of them things, and bless your heart I don’t know what.-it was. I guess it was just that she was Sadie Harrison and not nobody else in this world. No, she wasn’t nobody else, and she didn’t give a dingbat for nobody else, and that went for Elizabeth Fraser, too. I seen them two meet on Main Street CoOnnicloook He wasn’t - & _ — A